President Elect Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH Neanderthal B Woodman Domestic Violent Extremist SuperStraight
Sam saves the day! Again!
(Too bad she couldn’t have done it 2-3 days earlier when it was up on Montana. Or does Sam’s “SAM” (Surface to Air Missile) have that much range?)
Actually, based on my experience with high-altitude research balloons, the thing was already on its way down. The only thing the F-22 did was to bring it down in US territorial waters instead of International waters. Biden wasn’t ‘advised’ not to bring it down earlier, he was told straight out that it was impossible, assuming his staff wasn’t lying to him.
A Canadian CF-18 tried to bring down a US research balloon launched from Sweden in 1998 and failed. They were using bullets to ‘pop’ the ballon. No one who could have told them it wouldn’t work was asked beforehand. At operational (float) altitude, about 100,000 feet, no surface to air or air to air missile could touch it. A satellite killer could but we’re probably saving those for WWIII.
Basically, the whole thing was a fiasco from beginning to end.
I thought we had air launched missiles back in the ’80s that could shoot down LEO satellites? I seem to remember an F15 or 16 punching straight up and firing at apogee.
We successfully tested it, but had to stop in compliance with the Anti-Ballistic Missile System Treaty. We have tested other options, such as the sea-launched Standard Missile-3 ABM which shot down a failed US satellite in 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon
Zar Belk!
February 7, 2023 at 6:36 am
Henry
So a helium balloon is politically equivalent to a ballistic missile?
Oy vey!
February 6, 2023 at 11:37 pm
The 300
When over the US, it was at 60,000 feet. That’s within range of F-15s and air to air missiles.
It doesn’t make sense. 60K ft AGL is within the tropopause. It would be like traveling down the interstate in the center divider or off the shoulder. And 60K ft is at the top of each nation’s controlled air space. I’d believe 70K feet but only if the balloon was on its way down. And, short of massive incompetence, if it was feasible to shoot down the balloon, why on Earth wouldn’t they shoot it down over Montana? Can you think of a state that brings ‘sparsely populated’ to mind moreso than Montana?
The only explanation that makes sense is that we were sold a pack of lies.
February 6, 2023 at 2:51 am
Roger
I don’t trust anything this Administration tells us. With it conveniently coming down in the Atlantic, after a week of meandering all over the U.S., it made me think of Obama and the “need” to dump bin Laden’s body in the ocean. When you have lying, corrupt, deceptive people telling you “yeah, we took care of this problem, but there’s no actual proof, because it was disposed of in the ocean.” It just makes me suspicious, even if in a particular case they are telling the truth. If they present us with evidence they “retrieve from the ocean” how do we really know it’s real? It was always good not to fully trust the government, but if they told me it was a hot sunny day out, I’d be grabbing my coat and umbrella!
ThT explains a lot. I’ve been puzzling over what on the balloon instrument package would attract the IR seeker in a Sidewinder missile. Line-of-site turkey would handle it just fine.
It didn’t really need to track, and although there’s a chance it might lock on to reflected sunlight the detector is programmed to ignore that.
A straight ballistic shot would rupture the envelope, although why waste an expensive Sidewinder is a good question, possibly the width of the rear foils had something to do with it for maximum damage, although the proximity sensor might get a strong enough return from the balloon or it’s payload to trigger.
These sort of balloons are normally meant to get to a high enough altitude that they ‘pop’ on their own but they most often have a means of rupturing the envelope if required. It doesn’t take much for a tear in the right place to shred the fabric and it’s really quite impressive when it does.
Went out on an EOD call once for an ‘IED’ back in the early 80’s…turned out it was a package from a balloon, enclosed in a plain styrofoam case wrapped with strapping tape. The finder spotted wires through the partly opened seam on one side and called it in.
I’ll admit, it took us a few minutes to figure out what it was, turning it over remotely showed the “if found, call xxx-xxx-xxxx for reward” label. We didn’t get the reward 🙁
Begs the question of why there was no payload recovery ‘chute?
February 7, 2023 at 11:08 am
Oldarmourer
Any chute was probably caught in the trees or blown away, I doubt we looked.
I should have mentioned that it had been there quite awhile, the styrofoam was pretty weathered and the leaf litter had built up enough that it left an impression when it was pulled free.
Now that I think back I can remember a few more details, like the wires you could see were blue and red and my partner’s name that day, wonder if he’s alive and still kicking ?
It wasn’t really large, probably the size and shape of a thermos, just a basic meteorological package for the 70/80’s, maybe even been there since the 60’s, we got called out for WW1 and WW2 stuff regularly.
February 6, 2023 at 6:50 am
Brodder
Notice that administration was disappointed that it fell in not-so-deep waters.
Someone in CIA and Pentagon doesn’t want the package recovered or analyzed.
It would implicate major US DoD suppliers no doubt.
I’d laugh if someone in a scallop dragger beat the spooks and chinese both to it and hauled it up for public display (and data retrieval) the ‘Union made in the USA’ labels might be a tad embarrassing. 😉
It would be just like the Military Industrial Complex to be supplying both sides of any conflict however minor.
Witness what they’re doing in Ukraine.
Not only is Putin paying for his war with sales to the West, the MIC is testing Western weapons systems (some of them brand spanking new) in the field courtesy of the US taxpayer (any yes that includes confiscation by inflation).
The MIC is so rich already they can afford the best of the best brains world wide, and I have to wonder if the entire “give Red China our tech” movement is just a ploy to continue the Cold War for fun and profit.
The Luftwaffe war-making abilities of their new fighter/bomber aircraft (Stuka, et al.) were “flight-tested” during the Spanish Civil War. They performed extremely well, then and later. Franco loved them.
February 6, 2023 at 11:34 am
Kafiroon
It was a ‘turkey shoot’ and we are the turkeys that thing was setting us up for to be ‘shot’.
Having the ChatBot do the SOU, one is tempted to say Artificial Intelligence is better than none, but I’m afraid the programmers got their radical socialist message into the words of every quoted figure, nothing artificial about that.
No weapons needed at all, since the jet fighter was at least as high as the balloon. Just fly up close to it, light up the afterburners, pull up on the stick. Burn a big old hole in the bag just like that.
Instead destroying the balloon, which I believe could have been done with an AIM-120 AMRAAM radar-targeted, ‘fire and forget’ weapon (or maybe a short burst of 30mm), they opted for an AIM-9 Sidewinder, a heat-seeker which targeted the payload and spread it in thousands of pieces across the ocean floor.
On purpose?
A 120 has a lot bigger warhead than a 9, both are ‘expanding rod’ warheads that need to be within a certain distance of a target to function but the frag ring goes out a LONG way, on one course I took there was one from an AIM-9 going all the way around the classroom and it wasn’t completely extended by a long shot.
I keep seeing the balloon referred to as being ‘the size of three buses’, which really isn’t that big at all.
Given the media’s reluctance to provide any sort of useful measurement of anything, is that the size of the inflated balloon envelope ? likely. Or is it the size of the payload ? very, very unlikely, even counting antennae or solar panels as part of the ‘length’ but misleading is what the media does nowadays, and really, is there no place in Montana you could drop something that size and not hit anything ? or more precisely, is there any place in Montana where you could drop something that size and have a chance of hitting anything ? 😉
The biggest question is, what was this meant to distract the uninformed masses from ? hunter’s laptop ? brandon’s chicanery ? pfizer and others getting caught redhanded faking beerflu data ? same as the ridiculous performance at the grammies, that’s what’s in the ‘news’ today but what did it push out that should have been there ?
34 Comments
Good shootin’ Sam!
Sam saves the day! Again!
(Too bad she couldn’t have done it 2-3 days earlier when it was up on Montana. Or does Sam’s “SAM” (Surface to Air Missile) have that much range?)
Don’t you mean “Surface to Air Meateor”? The fact she managed to nail that balloon without a guidance system is impressive…
Hat tip to the Boston Pizza franchise for their brilliant marketing…
The Meateor™
Beefy Bolognese sauce, pizza mozzarella, smoked ham, pepperoni, seasoned ground beef, and spicy Italian sausage.
Giving “takeout” new meaning, and taking it to a new level…like 12 miles!
That poor Turkey.
Actually, based on my experience with high-altitude research balloons, the thing was already on its way down. The only thing the F-22 did was to bring it down in US territorial waters instead of International waters. Biden wasn’t ‘advised’ not to bring it down earlier, he was told straight out that it was impossible, assuming his staff wasn’t lying to him.
A Canadian CF-18 tried to bring down a US research balloon launched from Sweden in 1998 and failed. They were using bullets to ‘pop’ the ballon. No one who could have told them it wouldn’t work was asked beforehand. At operational (float) altitude, about 100,000 feet, no surface to air or air to air missile could touch it. A satellite killer could but we’re probably saving those for WWIII.
Basically, the whole thing was a fiasco from beginning to end.
I thought we had air launched missiles back in the ’80s that could shoot down LEO satellites? I seem to remember an F15 or 16 punching straight up and firing at apogee.
We successfully tested it, but had to stop in compliance with the Anti-Ballistic Missile System Treaty. We have tested other options, such as the sea-launched Standard Missile-3 ABM which shot down a failed US satellite in 2008.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon
Zar Belk!
So a helium balloon is politically equivalent to a ballistic missile?
Oy vey!
When over the US, it was at 60,000 feet. That’s within range of F-15s and air to air missiles.
It doesn’t make sense. 60K ft AGL is within the tropopause. It would be like traveling down the interstate in the center divider or off the shoulder. And 60K ft is at the top of each nation’s controlled air space. I’d believe 70K feet but only if the balloon was on its way down. And, short of massive incompetence, if it was feasible to shoot down the balloon, why on Earth wouldn’t they shoot it down over Montana? Can you think of a state that brings ‘sparsely populated’ to mind moreso than Montana?
The only explanation that makes sense is that we were sold a pack of lies.
I don’t trust anything this Administration tells us. With it conveniently coming down in the Atlantic, after a week of meandering all over the U.S., it made me think of Obama and the “need” to dump bin Laden’s body in the ocean. When you have lying, corrupt, deceptive people telling you “yeah, we took care of this problem, but there’s no actual proof, because it was disposed of in the ocean.” It just makes me suspicious, even if in a particular case they are telling the truth. If they present us with evidence they “retrieve from the ocean” how do we really know it’s real? It was always good not to fully trust the government, but if they told me it was a hot sunny day out, I’d be grabbing my coat and umbrella!
Well, we can give them credit for being consistent, Deceptive and Projective, ALL the time. LGB! Ah hell, FUDS!
Copy what Roger said above as well, Why over water? A “Bin Laden” maneuver to be sure. Nice Shootin there, Sam! 🙂
ThT explains a lot. I’ve been puzzling over what on the balloon instrument package would attract the IR seeker in a Sidewinder missile. Line-of-site turkey would handle it just fine.
It didn’t really need to track, and although there’s a chance it might lock on to reflected sunlight the detector is programmed to ignore that.
A straight ballistic shot would rupture the envelope, although why waste an expensive Sidewinder is a good question, possibly the width of the rear foils had something to do with it for maximum damage, although the proximity sensor might get a strong enough return from the balloon or it’s payload to trigger.
These sort of balloons are normally meant to get to a high enough altitude that they ‘pop’ on their own but they most often have a means of rupturing the envelope if required. It doesn’t take much for a tear in the right place to shred the fabric and it’s really quite impressive when it does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvnrLTchn3o
Went out on an EOD call once for an ‘IED’ back in the early 80’s…turned out it was a package from a balloon, enclosed in a plain styrofoam case wrapped with strapping tape. The finder spotted wires through the partly opened seam on one side and called it in.
I’ll admit, it took us a few minutes to figure out what it was, turning it over remotely showed the “if found, call xxx-xxx-xxxx for reward” label. We didn’t get the reward 🙁
Begs the question of why there was no payload recovery ‘chute?
Any chute was probably caught in the trees or blown away, I doubt we looked.
I should have mentioned that it had been there quite awhile, the styrofoam was pretty weathered and the leaf litter had built up enough that it left an impression when it was pulled free.
Now that I think back I can remember a few more details, like the wires you could see were blue and red and my partner’s name that day, wonder if he’s alive and still kicking ?
It wasn’t really large, probably the size and shape of a thermos, just a basic meteorological package for the 70/80’s, maybe even been there since the 60’s, we got called out for WW1 and WW2 stuff regularly.
Notice that administration was disappointed that it fell in not-so-deep waters.
Someone in CIA and Pentagon doesn’t want the package recovered or analyzed.
It would implicate major US DoD suppliers no doubt.
I’d laugh if someone in a scallop dragger beat the spooks and chinese both to it and hauled it up for public display (and data retrieval) the ‘Union made in the USA’ labels might be a tad embarrassing. 😉
It would be just like the Military Industrial Complex to be supplying both sides of any conflict however minor.
Witness what they’re doing in Ukraine.
Not only is Putin paying for his war with sales to the West, the MIC is testing Western weapons systems (some of them brand spanking new) in the field courtesy of the US taxpayer (any yes that includes confiscation by inflation).
The MIC is so rich already they can afford the best of the best brains world wide, and I have to wonder if the entire “give Red China our tech” movement is just a ploy to continue the Cold War for fun and profit.
The Luftwaffe war-making abilities of their new fighter/bomber aircraft (Stuka, et al.) were “flight-tested” during the Spanish Civil War. They performed extremely well, then and later. Franco loved them.
It was a ‘turkey shoot’ and we are the turkeys that thing was setting us up for to be ‘shot’.
Thank you, Sam, from a grateful nation. Due to the nature of your recent mission details must remain classified.
http://www.kingcustom.net/assets/images/MEDALS/Insert%20Medals/turkey-insert.jpg
Speaking of turkeys and commies…
Having the ChatBot do the SOU, one is tempted to say Artificial Intelligence is better than none, but I’m afraid the programmers got their radical socialist message into the words of every quoted figure, nothing artificial about that.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-top-national-security-officials-refute-claim-that-chinese-spy-balloons-transited-us-under-last-admin/ar-AA178rK0?li=BBnb7Kz
Sorry, wrong link…
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/chatgpt-bot-channels-history-pen-state-union-speech-96916882
But, related to Trump’s balloon comments, note that they did not do a ‘bot version of him talking about the state of the swamp…
I want to know why they used to multiply million dollar missile to take down a stinking balloon. A BB gun would have been sufficient
No weapons needed at all, since the jet fighter was at least as high as the balloon. Just fly up close to it, light up the afterburners, pull up on the stick. Burn a big old hole in the bag just like that.
Anyone know if the movie rights are available for this?
Off topic, for those interested in earthquakes and such
https://www.twitch.tv/dutchsinseofficial/
Instead destroying the balloon, which I believe could have been done with an AIM-120 AMRAAM radar-targeted, ‘fire and forget’ weapon (or maybe a short burst of 30mm), they opted for an AIM-9 Sidewinder, a heat-seeker which targeted the payload and spread it in thousands of pieces across the ocean floor.
On purpose?
A 120 has a lot bigger warhead than a 9, both are ‘expanding rod’ warheads that need to be within a certain distance of a target to function but the frag ring goes out a LONG way, on one course I took there was one from an AIM-9 going all the way around the classroom and it wasn’t completely extended by a long shot.
I keep seeing the balloon referred to as being ‘the size of three buses’, which really isn’t that big at all.
Given the media’s reluctance to provide any sort of useful measurement of anything, is that the size of the inflated balloon envelope ? likely. Or is it the size of the payload ? very, very unlikely, even counting antennae or solar panels as part of the ‘length’ but misleading is what the media does nowadays, and really, is there no place in Montana you could drop something that size and not hit anything ? or more precisely, is there any place in Montana where you could drop something that size and have a chance of hitting anything ? 😉
The biggest question is, what was this meant to distract the uninformed masses from ? hunter’s laptop ? brandon’s chicanery ? pfizer and others getting caught redhanded faking beerflu data ? same as the ridiculous performance at the grammies, that’s what’s in the ‘news’ today but what did it push out that should have been there ?
Good info. And questions.
Gunpowder, Texas to Myrtle Beach N.C. with no guidence system? Sam coulda hit it over the Aluitians, if she’d known about it!